Meeting Notes Meetings notes from the Mozilla community

Actions from Last Week

• Juan to dig into broken XML parsing on netError.xhtml
  • bug 802725 – Unable to reproduce but it was correlated to some extensions that make use of a resource that it wasn’t able to access.

Schedule & Progress onUpcoming Releases

Firefox Desktop

Release (16, 10esr)

• FF16.0.1 was unthrottled late last week
• Other release builds underway

• Resolving a hotfix cert issue

Beta (17)

• Beta 2 with SocialAPI/Facebook support went out Monday morning
• Beta 3 will go out today

• CTP blocklist testing with newer versions of Flash has begun

• bug 803181 – Faster uptake of latest Firefox version updates

Aurora (18)

• B2G landings note

Firefox Mobile

Beta (17)

• Pursuing a FF17 ARMv6 release for phones that meet current system requirements

Aurora (18)

• Improved panning on ARMv6 (uplifted to next Beta)

Nightly (19)

• Homescreen search widget
• Improved home page thumbnails
• History expiration
• Tab expiration
• Coming Soon
  • Private browsing (per tab)
  • Personas (lightweight themes)
  • Reflow-on-zoom improvements
  • Dynamic tile system

Firefox Metro

• LOE estimation starts Thursday after the Team Meeting
  • Schedule and Resource Planning will come after estimation

Services

Firefox Sync

• Firefox Account work is ongoing on desktop and mobile, in tandem with the ID team

Product Announcements

•  :jrconlin working with Services Ops on getting stage and production instances live
•  :rnewman working on testing fully-built client against a local install of JR’s code

Firefox Health Report client

• Core framework progressing, reviews started on first patches
• Intent is to land as much as possible in the current cycle (Fx19)
  • We are working with Metrics/Ops to understand the timeline for full production infrastructure.

Add-on SDK

Release (1.10 -> Firefox 16, 17)

Stabilization (1.11 -> Firefox 17, 18)

Development (1.12 -> Firefox 18, 19)

• on track for SDK 1.11 next Tuesday, final RC hopefully today.

Apps

Firefox OS Simulator

• small team working on new product for testing Firefox OS apps
• implemented as Firefox Desktop addon, bundles B2G Desktop, exposes functionality via browser tab
• based on r2d2b2g experimental prototype (about which more in hacks blog post and myk’s blog post)
• uses Add-on SDK, supports same versions of Firefox Desktop as SDK

• nascent project, infrastructure incomplete
• product requirements document
• version 1 technical specification for minimal viable product
• code repository
• issue tracker
• #openwebapps for discussion

• team pushing hard to ship v1 on November 14 in time for MozCamp Asia November 16-18
• shipping includes distributing on AMO and via USB sticks at MozCamp Asia
• major blockers in dependent projects include Windows crasher bug 795484 and 64-bit Linux builds

Feedback Summary

Desktop

• Complaints about the multiple tabs warning continue to grow [1][2]
• Users upset about the loss of “send link” from context menu. [3][4][5]

Mobile

No Dramatic changes from last week, see Mobile Meeting notes here

User Experience (design & research)

• [Firefox Concept Week]
  • The Firefox UX/UR team are diving deep into our library of research findings, and spending this week mining them for potential new features and enhancements for Firefox. Stay tuned for the results!

• [desktop]
  • [misc]
    • Working on final spec, menu panel first and then customization mode
      • Try build with menu panel and customization by Blair (Unfocused) http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/try-builds/bmcbride@mozilla.com-4c6aade0dec7/
      • Exploration on Notification: Educate users about Australis http://cl.ly/image/3j313L3c1z31/o

• • [Social API] (Boriss)
    • Filing remaining polish & performance bugs now that we have a wider audience
    • Collecting feedback from beta users on user experience issues
    • Sketching v2 features

• • [newtab2/hometab] (Boriss)
    • Digitizing new mockups for next version
    • Getting plan for prototype implementation together

• [project SPF (security/privacy)] (Larissa)
  • Cert Error Message reuinification
  • Improve the Site Identity Indicator design!
  • Usable Security Report

• [metro] (yuan)
  • Iterating on the Settings Charm UI for Firefox Windows 8 v2. About Firefox Page. v1: http://cl.ly/image/3a3C3A0L170b
  • Keep supporting the implementation on StartUI,and portrait mode.
  • Testing out the touch interactions using Windows 8 TouchMouse.

• [android] (ibarlow)
  • prototyping and evaluating better default content fonts
  • designing and prototyping some search suggestion improvements http://cl.ly/image/1i2U0u1Z3X1g (Blake)

• [User Research – Project Meta] (Lindsay, Bill, Leo)
  • We are in the final planning stages for Project Meta – AKA the Firefox user segmentation project. We will be in the field in Toronto, Charlotte, NC, and Los Angeles the week of November 5. If you are interested in going into the field with one of the teams, please email Bill Selman (wselman@mozilla.com) or Lindsay Kenzig (lkenzig@mozilla.com) to let them know.

Market insights from the Product Marketing Strategy Team

Desktop / Platform

Apple

• Apple started to work to remove most Macs of old Java plugins, forcing users to update. Java 6 and earlier were removed.

Google

• Chrome redesigned their malware warning page slightly, making a bit more difficult for users to easily click through the screen to receive the content.
• Dev versions of Chrome now support border radius clipping
• Google continued to integrate its web applications into the Chrome experience — Docs, Sheets, and Slides are now available as apps in the Chrome Web Store, and as icons in the Chrome start screen once installed.
• Google has spent $13.1 million on political lobbying so far during 2012 in an effort to dissuade federal regulators from suing the company over antitrust allegations.
• Chrome’s Developer Tools now support mobile device emulation, including native User Agent and dimension overriding. They also offer support for profiling Chrome’s rendering performance.
• Google is now offering a Native Client development add-in for Visual Studio
• A new SDK for the Dart programming was released.
• Google awarded $60,000 to a prolific security researcher who used two bugs to escape the Chrome Sandbox.

Microsoft

• Windows 8 is released this week. Analysts predict that 2013 will be a tough year for Microsoft, as they now have only about a 30% share of personal computing devices when PCs, tablets and smartphones are combined.
• The MSIE10 team posted a detailed summary of how developers can identify, support, and test for MSIE10 on the upcoming release of Windows 8 Phone.
• Microsoft also announced that MSIE10 will be made available on Windows 7 in November
• Internet Explorer came to XBox this week

Nokia

• Nokia released Xpress, a proxy compression-enabled browser combined with an RSS Reader. Interestingly, it appears that it does *not* use the native MSIE10 rendering engine, but something different.

WebKit

• CSS compositing and blending has been activated in WebKit Nightlies.

Mobile

• 7.9-inch iPad mini launched
• Nexus 10-inch tablet rumored to be revealed at Android event on the 29th of October
• Chrome OS has been ported to ARM architecture
• Nokia launching $199 entry-level Lumia smartphone aimed at emerging markets
• Mobile phones to overtake PCs as most common Web access method in 2013, according to Gartner
• Nearly 2 out of 3 smartphones shipped in H1 of 2012 were on Android, according to Vision Mobile
• Further details available in your inbox or here

Marketing, Press & Public Reaction

Marketing

Desktop

• Ramping up Messenger for Firefox marketing campaign
• Social API Beta now live — see the marketing goals for this time-period here [6]

Mobile

• Review solicitation continues to show great results, in the last two weeks 9,000 5-star reviews and 6,500 pieces of feedback on SUMO.
• Current Projects
  • Working on ASO (App Store Optimization, similar to SEO) changes to the Google Play Store description & screenshots to improve search ranking position and download CTAs
  • Strategy work for 2013 is kicking off
• Recent & Planned communications:
  • October 16th: One-off email about “Reader Mode”
  • October 24th: Social Post on Facebook prompting users to “rate” Firefox for Android
  • October 30th: Firefox & You focused on “Halloween & Security”

Press

Mozilla’s New Social API Lets You Bring Facebook Along Wherever You Surf The Web

Sharing But With Privacy In Mind: Mozilla Launches Social API For Firefox, Facebook Messenger First Service To Integrate For Beta Testing

Firefox begins testing Social API with Facebook Messenger, here’s how you can take part

Socialfox: New Feature Puts Facebook in Your Firefox

Firefox Marketplace Is Now Open With Latest Aurora Release

Mozilla Plans H.264 Video for Desktop Firefox

Mozilla Opens Its Firefox For Android Marketplace To Developers And Early Adopters

Firefox Aurora Brings Mozilla’s Web-App Marketplace to Android

Questions, Comments, FYI

• Engineering Metrics
• (catlee) ongoing load problems with FTP/SCL3 – possible impact to releases bug 804984

Actions this week

---

Planning Meeting Details

• Wednesdays – 11:00am PDT, 18:00 UTC
• Mountain View Offices: Warp Core Conference Room
• Toronto Offices: Finch Conference Room
• irc.mozilla.org #planning for backchannel
• (the developer meeting takes place on Tuesdays)

Video/Teleconference Details – NEW

• 650-903-0800 or 650-215-1282 x92 Conf# 99696 (US/INTL)
• 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 99696 (US)
• Vidyo Room: ProductCoordination
• Vidyo Guest URL